To Befriend Monsters
by Motherflipping Oak
Summary: Jen's pokémon journey takes a sharp downward turn when she finds herself kidnapped to a strange underground lab. Will she and her allies make it out again, or will they succumb to the same fate as those before them?


_A/N: Happy early Halloween, folks._

_With special thanks to thechinskyguy._

* * *

Once Jen's eyes were utterly dry and as goggled as the magikarp's, the fish pokémon finally relented. It hopped out of the water and onto her lap, showering her with salty droplets.

The little boy with sunburns and scabbed kneecaps who had showed her around the island pulled away to avoid the splash, but soon leaned forward with great enthusiasm. "You can hypnotise pokémon!"

"It's not really hypnosis." Jen gave the magikarp a smile the thrashing creature probably didn't notice, then released it back into the sea with a resounding splash. Mysidia, her starmie, was the only water-type she would ever need. "You just need to show the pokémon that you're friends. Sometimes you have to look at them quietly, and sometimes you have to look away, instead..."

The boy frowned, disappointed.

"...Yeah, I can hypnotise pokémon," she concluded.

The boy's smile returned. "Can you do it with any pokémon? Like with a ponyta?"

Jen's brief acquaintance with the kid had already taught her ponytas were, along with bubblegum and climbing in trees, his favourite thing in the world. "Probably. I've never tried."

Down in the water, the magikarp swam in circles mere inches from where she had dropped it, sporting the typical glassy stare of the species. "Magikarp are kinda tough, actually. They always look the same no what what they are thinking." Mysidia did, too, but she had learned to tell if he was excited or agitated by how fast he rotated his body. "You can learn to call them to you if you practice, though."

The boy nodded with the profound solemnity of an eight-year-old. "I'm gonna. Now I gotta go home, though. I don't wanna get grounded."

"Right. Sorry to keep you out so late."

"Do you wanna come stay with us? I'm sure Mom won't mind."

Jen picked up her rucksack from behind a wave-eroded rock. "Thanks, but I still need to go to the Pokémon Center. Thanks for showing me around."

The boy nodded and scurried off, leaving Jen alone to admire the sun descent into the sea. She retrieved her badge case and raised the Cinnabar flame aloft so that it caught and reflected the last rays of the day.

She'd miss the island, she decided, trekking inland. The sky was a velvety black by the time she reached the village, alight with a hundred lanterns washing the building in a soft, amber glow. A few of the locals sat outside fanning themselves or sipping a sitrus berry-infused local drink, but for the most part, she was allowed to stomp around the packed earth paths in solitude.

That is, till she saw several blinding spotlights ahead. After her eyes adjusted to the light, she realised with a start it was the police, peering into the darkness with great suspicion and asking questions from a local man in a striped shirt.

She approached, half because of curiosity and half because she could reach the centre by following the path. She made sure to keep her distance. Mom would never let her hear the end of it if she got in the way of officers on duty.

She only made it ten paces when an officer spun around, the light of her torch aiming at Jen's feet. "Hey, you there!"

Jen approached, confused; certainly she hadn't done anything to merit police attention. Perhaps they thought she had witnessed something? "Yes, officer?"

The officer looked surprised, but soon mastered her expression. "Do you have a place to stay at for tonight?"

"I have an offer for one. I just need to—" She gestured at the four balls clipped onto her belt, and nudged her head in the direction of the Pokémon Center.

The officer turned off the torch and relaxed her shoulders. Only now did Jen see how tense she had been. "Of course. Stay in well-lit areas and where multiple people can see you."

"Has something happened?"

The officer shifted uncomfortably. "A trainer from the mainland has gone missing. Roughly your age, as it happens."

"Oh." Though the officer had said _from mainland_, Jen automatically thought about the local boy who had acted as her tour guide, and prayed he had made it back to his mother safely. "When did it happen?"

"Last night." The officer looked aside and coughed. "I shouldn't tell you this, but perhaps the knowledge will make you more cautious. There have been rumours of travelling trainers going missing here for several months now. This is the first time we have concrete evidence of a disappearance. You wouldn't have happened to see him? Dark shaggy hair, short, carries a purple backpack with a frayed strap."

"Afraid not." The description made Jen think of Stu, her former neighbour and the only kid she knew who had owned a purple backpack. But the last time she had spoken to him, he had had no interest in becoming a trainer, let alone the champion. "You'll be the first to know if I do."

"I know. Run along, then." The officer's professional calm gave way to a quick smile. "I'll call your mother tomorrow and tell her I saw you in great health."

Jen laughed. "Tell her about my six badges too, Auntie!"

There was a spring in her step as she kept going, but her good mood ebbed away even as new stars winked open overhead. The disappearance of a fellow trainer was no joke, and while she personally suspected that if this boy was anything like her, he had simply gotten too carried away adventuring in a seaside cavern to remember to charge his phone, you never knew...

She held her head up. Auntie and the other police officers would take care of it. Her job was to make sure her pokémon were in top shape for the journey to Pallet Town the following day.

The fluorescent lights of the Pokémon Center greeted her with their artificial, but familiar glow. The decor of the centre was no different from any other centre Jen had set foot in during her journey, but the ever-bright smile of the lone nurse at the counter was startlingly genuine. Jen assumed she was just bored and glad someone had dropped by at this late hour, but it made her smile back regardless.

She placed her four pokéballs in the tray the nurse provided, making sure they all faced the same direction. It wasn't in any way necessary, but she always felt like she was doing it wrong if she just plopped them down any which way. If the nurse noticed, she didn't comment.

She did comment on something once she had placed the tray snugly under the healing rays of the centre's machinery. "Your marowak..."

Fear gripped Jen's chest. "Is something wrong with her?"

The nurse's smile grew gentler still. "Oh no, she is healthy enough. It's just that..." She turned, staring at a screen Jen couldn't see from so far away. "Her bone structure indicates an exceptionally old marowak. I dare wager she is significantly older than you."

Jen smiled. "Yeah, Cleyra's kinda special."

"I'm only bringing this up because we have developed an experimental rejuvenation treatment for pokémon here at Cinnabar." The obvious pride in the nurse's voice suggested she had played a key part in the project. "It's not a miracle cure by any stretch, but it does improve the mobility and flexibility of senior pokémon."

"That sounds really cool, but, um..." Jen tried to recall just how much of her earnings she had squirrelled away, and how much her dream bike, the one with flames painted all over the sides, cost.

"Since it's still experimental, we wouldn't charge you anything. There's a bit of a time investment, but if you can wait for the eight hours the procedure takes, we'd be happy to offer it to your Cleyra."

Jen perked up. Though Cleyra more than held her own in battle, she had lately noticed a certain sluggishness to her movements. Anything that made Cleyra's life easier was worth a shot, especially if it meant they could keep travelling together for longer. "Yeah, that's great!"

The lights on the healing machine dimmed down. The nurse placed the tray back on the counter and gently plucked Cleyra's ball off it. "I'll be back in a moment."

Jen clipped her other pokémon back to her belt. "Is it okay if I stay here for the time?" Some nurses were touchier about letting trainers bunk in the waiting room than others, but most were really nice about it, and even knowing Cleyra was in good hands and safely asleep inside her ball, leaving her behind would have felt like leaving behind a part of herself.

Luckily, this nurse was the friendly kind. "Of course! Assuming you can find yourself some room from all this crowd." She gestured at the empty chairs with a sardonic grin.

Jen found herself a comfy seat and slouched down. After she got drowsy, she untied her bandanna from around her neck and placed it around her eyes as a makeshift sleep mask. The day had been long enough that she soon fell into a deep slumber.

* * *

She knew something was off before she even opened her eyes. A light shone into them, a dim red one she shouldn't have been able to see through her bandanna. After some experimentation, she discovered the cloth had slipped back down to her neck while she slept. Her back was stiff, which wasn't that weird after sleeping in a chair, and there was a thin quilt over her, which wasn't unheard of when sleeping near an exceptionally kind nurse. What was strange, apart from the red light, was that she was lying on what felt like the floor.

She blinked uneasily, feeling dizzy and sluggish. There was an odd taste in her mouth that took her a while to recognise: it was like the antibiotics she'd had to take after falling from a tree and cracking her shin open on a sharp stone. It took her several more moments to open her eyes and to register where she was.

Once she did, she snapped wide awake.

She was in a cell.

She scrambled upright and squinted at her surroundings. Three of the walls were made out of metal bars laid so close to one another she couldn't get her leg through. The last one, the one at the back, was of solid reddish rock, or at least it looked red under the light. Far away, barely visible here was a tiny green light next what might have been a door, but Jen's eyesight wasn't good enough for her to be sure.

She was now fully awake, more awake than she had ever been in her life. Shrugging the quilt aside, she began combing through every inch of the wall. If she looked at it close enough, surely she'd find some inconsistency which would prove it was all just a bad dream after all? Her heart sank each time her touch proved another bit of metal or concrete to be depressingly solid.

Swallowing down her panic, she turned her attention to the insides of the cell. It was empty besides a reeking drain from which she hastily backed away. She located the door soon enough. Groping at it blindly told her it had a number pad, as well as a slot for a key card. Outside the cell were official-looking cabinets and heavy desks, looming like ghosts in the dark, all too far for her to reach, and more identical cells like her and those adjacent to hers, six altogether.

She looked down. Panic rose to her throat. Her belt was gone, and her pokémon with it.

A part of her wanted to curl up on the floor and cry it out. She got as far as slumping down, but though there was a black cloud right behind her eyes, no tears came out. What would her mother do in this situation? Cry? Probably not. Get angry? Maybe. But she'd definitely keep looking for a way out, or at least a way to call for help.

So. First she'd have find out where she was.

Upon closer inspection, the cell to her left wasn't empty. There were some boxes, the nearest of which she just might reach if she stretched her fingers as far as they went, as well as a large bundle wrapped in cloth. Whether they'd be of any use was another question entirely, but she was happy to grasp at straws if it meant having something at hand.

She poked her shoulder through the bars and reached out, groping at air before finally managing to hook her fingers over the top of the top. She pulled.

The box tumbled to the floor, revealing itself to be empty. It made very little noise — it was just plain cardboard — but the soft thud was enough to rouse the wrapped bundle. "Whuzzat?"

Jen retracted her arm and scooted away from arm's reach, eyes trained on the stirring form, only to relax. The voice belonged to a groggy boy no older than she was, and immediately she felt silly for getting nervous. But then, if this wasn't the time to stay alert, then what was?

Slowly, the hunched figure sat up and unveiled itself, revealing a sharp-faced, weedy boy with spiky bed hair. He squinted uncertainly into the dark. "Who's there? I can't see without my glasses."

It was his tone more than his appearance that kindled recognition in Jen. "Stu?"

Stu blinked at the name. "How the heck..." He leaned closer, then shuffled forward till his nose nearly touched the bars. His eyes widened. "Jen?"

Jen couldn't help it. She laughed, with a nervous lilt that was quickly swallowed up by the darkness. Still, it removed some of the crushing weight over her. She may have been trapped in what looked to be some sort of an abandoned warehouse, with her pokémon gone and almost certainly in the hands of criminals, with no idea what whoever had kidnapped her had in store for her, but somehow, of all the people in the world, but at least she had been reunited with her childhood friend. Someone was smiling at her, even if it probably was one of the less pleasant gods.

"Yeah, it's definitely you," Stu said as her voice petered out, deadpan as ever. "Only you'd laugh like a poochyena in a dinky place like this."

Back when they had been five, she would had beaned him with a plush electrode for a comment like that. This time, Jen was more than happy to let it slide. "How did you end up here?"

"Well." Stu raised his hand as if to push up his missing glasses. He let it drop. "I made my reservations weeks in advance. Though I have to say, the service isn't half as good as the flyers claimed it would be. Five-star prison experience, my foot."

Jen almost began to laugh all over again. It wasn't actually funny, however. "Have you been here for long?"

"Not sure. I've been awake twice now, so probably not that long."

"I'm surprised you could sleep here at all." Her back still ached.

Stu shrugged. "They put something in the food, I think."

"Food?" For a moment, Jen was distracted by thoughts of noodles and grilled vegetables. When had her last proper meal been? Years ago, by the feel of it. "Did someone bring it to you?"

"Yeah. A woman in a long lab coat and a flu mask." He shrugged again. "Truth be told, I didn't pay her that much attention."

Jen's jaw dropped. She was used to Stu's way of thinking differing wildly from that of normal people, but this still took the cake. "How could you not?"

Stu reached inside his quilt and triumphantly brandishes something that looked like a trading card. "Because I was busy finding a good time to nab this, of course."

Jen leaned in closer. Stu turned the card as to reveal its magnet strip.

"Brilliant!" She would have hugged Stu if not for the bars between them.

Stu's triumphant pose deflated. "Problem is, we need a passcode too. I heard her punch in four numbers, but I have no clue what they were."

Jen cursed under her breath. The missing card would be discovered sooner rather than later, and any window of opportunity to escape would be gone with it. "We'll have to bruteforce it."

"And what if there's an alarm for too many mistakes?"

"Then we'll be in just as much trouble as we will be when the woman fails to get into her locker or whatever." When Stu remained fixed in place like a startled metapod, she extended her hand into his cell. "If you won't do it, I will. I'll say I saw it on the floor and grabbed it."

"The combination's one-seven-three," a hoarse voice called out from the darkness.

Both Jen and Stu froze.

There was a slow shuffling movement somewhere in the cells the other side of the room. When Jen focused, she could just about see a haggard man with broken glasses and a bruised face leaning in their direction. He wore a lab coat with the back to the front, the same way she turned upside down to sleep on long trips.

"For both locks," the man added when they responded with a baffled silence, then sniffed. "She never had much imagination for codes."

Jen glanced at Stu, then took the card from his unresisting fingers. "Is there an alarm?"

"It allows for a single mistake. Swipe the card first."

That could wait. First, she familiarised herself with the feel of the keypad, counting over the keys several times just to make sure she knew where each one was. Finally, and with painstaking effort, she swiped a card. A low beep rang out. Her fingers trembling, she pushed in the code. One... seven... three...

Nothing happened.

"Enter's to the right," the man said. "Your left."

Jen glared at the nearby wall, then pushed the button the bottom left corner. There was another, slightly longer beep, after which the door clanked open.

Within moments, she was out and pulling Stu out of his shelf. He staggered awkwardly and leaned heavily into her. At, first, she thought she had been too rough. Then, she saw his foot.

"What happened?" She leaned Stu against the door instead and crouched to roll down his sock. A huge swatch of the foot around the ankle bone was a patchwork of irritated skin and thick scar tissue. No wonder he wasn't wearing shoes: the foot was so swollen it wouldn't have fit anyway.

He managed a chuckle. "Burned it while trying to teach Surt to roll over. I thought it'd get better if I just let it be, but then it started to ache twice as hard and—" An irritated headshake. "Doesn't matter now."

"You should have shown this to a nurse." For the first and possibly the last time in her life, Jen wished she was a nurse herself. All she could do was roll the sock back up and hope Stu could cope.

"I did." Stu closed his eyes and placed his weight back onto both feet. There was no outward grimace. "When it started to throb again, I showed it to the nurse at the centre here. She said that she knew a salve that worked just as well on humans as pokémon but that she'd have to fetch it from the basement storage and that it would take a long time to absorb. So, I stayed there for the night and—"

He was interrupted by a quiet, but distinctly rude chuckle from the other prisoner. They both turned to stare at him.

"Yeah, that's how she gets you." His words began as a sneer, but ended in a dry cough. When he continued, it was in a milder tone. "You stupid kids never suspect anything bad could happen at a Pokémon Center. But then, neither do the cops."

Jen stood up to her full height. "Who are you?"

"Does it matter? Let me out so we can escape." The man shuddered. "You are free to stay if you like, but I will not be here when she comes back."

"Who's _she?"_

"The boss." He fixed an intense stare on her. It lost some of its impact due to the broken lens. "Come on. Get moving."

Jen took a step towards the cell, then halted midway. Stu hobbled over to her side.

"First you're gonna answer a few questions," he said.

Jen hesitated, then nodded. Something about the way the prisoner spoke rubbed her off the wrong way, and it wasn't just calling her and Stu dumb.

"We don't have time for this," the man protested.

"Then make your answers snappy," said Jen. "Where are we?"

The man looked from her to Stu and back, then finally relented. "Since you're tourists, you must have seen the abandoned mansion. The one with the padlock on the door and a sign telling kids to stay away."

"Sure." Jen decided to let the 'tourist' comment slide. She didn't really feel like a trainer without her pokémon, anyway.

"Years ago, they used the space to operate a laboratory. The finest minds of the region were gathered there." He smiled ironically in a way which made Jen suspect he was bitter he himself hadn't been included in their numbers. "Well, their research ended up going belly-up, but some of their underground facilities remained."

"We're underneath the mansion?" Untoward memories of spelunking in zubat-infested caves reared their head. And to think she had once thought underground adventures were fun.

"Our funding allowed us to expand a fair bit beyond the mansion, but close enough." The man glanced upwards. "I'd say we're closer to the Pokémon Center. The basement connects the two buildings."

"And the nurse..." Butterfrees fluttered in Jen's stomach.

The man gave her a wry smile. "What do you think?"

"It doesn't matter now," Stu interrupted. "What's the fastest way out of here?"

The man made a sweeping gesture towards the door, only his hand struck against the bars. "I will tell you that you won't make it out of here without help. Especially not with that bum leg of yours. Let me out." He saw the looks on Jen and Stu's faces sighed. "Do you think they have me locked up in here as a part of some holiday package? If I stay, I'm dead."

Jen and Stu exchanged looks. Though it had been a long time since their previous meeting, they still managed to come to a silent agreement. They would free the man, but the moment he became too suspicious, they'd tackle him down.

The man rolled his eyes as they turned back towards him. "Charming solidarity you two have there. Now, about the lock?"

A swipe and four button presses later, he staggered outside. Closer up, he looked less threatening than he had hunched in the shadows: there was a strange gash on his right cheek with swollen, bubbling flesh that looked so painful the sight made Jen flinch. Much like Stu, he dragged his foot. He gave the two of them a blank look like he had already forgotten who they are, then shrugged. "Good. Follow me, then."

Offering Stu her shoulder, Jen followed the man at a safe distance. She would have felt much better with some pokémon at hand, and just the thought of her team at the hands of kidnappers was enough to make her want to find whoever was responsible and kick them in the spleen.

Exiting the room, they came to a long corridor with walls made out of metal sheets. It reminded Jen of the basement of her old school, only this place was on a much larger scale. The light strip attached to the wall was white and bright enough that she had to blink rapidly to adjust to it. There was a thin yellow line painted on the floor, and another red one ran concurrently with it. The room they had been in was simply labelled 31B. The other doors had similarly nondescript signs. It would have been trial and error to find anything there without further information.

Not that it made her feel much better as they began following the man down the corridor. The sound of their footsteps magnified in the empty space and echoed in all directions in the narrow corridor. It felt like they were treasure hunters were in the tomb of some ancient emperor, one laden with traps and curses.

"Hey," said Stu abruptly, addressing the man. "Since we've got time, care to explain what's the deal with this place?"

The man slowed down for the briefest of moments, then kept going as though nothing had happened. It took him so long to respond Jen had already opened her mouth to demand an answer. "It would be beyond your level of comprehension."

"Dumb it down, then." Stu had never had much patience.

"Simply put, this a pharmaceutical research facility." Jen could practically hear the man rolling his eyes.

"I didn't know running those involves kidnapping." Stu's voice drifted away towards the end of his statement as he presumably came to a similar conclusion as Jen did. Why would a pharmaceutical facility kidnap someone? There were only bad answers to that question.

"I didn't want any part in it!" The man snapped, his voice finally showing an emotion besides smarminess and boredom. "Do you think anyone becomes a researcher in medicine for the fun of crime? Or money? It's a lottery no matter how bright you are, since your funding always comes from those with the money and the contracts..."

His rant deteriorated into angry muttering, but Jen had stopped paying attention long before that. If the weirdos running the facility were willing to kidnap people for testing, they'd have no qualms about testing whatever they foul things they were researching on pokémon as well.

"Where are our pokémon?" she asked.

This finally made the man turn his head. "Worry about your own skin first!"

She stopped dead in her track, eliciting a small protest from Stu. "I'm not leaving without them."

"Ugh." Stu wavered from the pain, then steadied himself and nodded. "Neither am I."

The man rolled his eyes. "And they called me sentimental."

"It only makes sense for us to have our teams at hand in case we run into someone," Jen argued. "What kind of security do they have here, anyway?"

The man kept walking, but more slowly. "The patrolling guards only carry pokémon, but the quick response team has side arms as well. That's the full extent of my knowledge. I never cared much about how things were run as long as no-one interfered with my research."

He halted abruptly. "We need that key card here, kid."

Jen approached, then frowned. They were standing before a lift. "If this requires a key card to work, shouldn't its owner have noticed already?"

The man shrugged. "It's only required for access the lower floors."

"And why would we wanna go there?" asked Stu.

"Because I'm not leaving here without my research."

The man straightened his back, his damaged face further contorting with pain. "They may have eroded my ethics and stiffed me on my payment, but those vultures are not going to benefit from my findings any longer. I'm taking my pokéball and leaving."

He looked very earnest for once, almost heroic, but Jen still didn't like the sound of his plans. "I thought you wanted to just leave."

"The research I did here is very significant." A note of enthusiasm crept into the man's voice. "It could revolutionise not only the supplement industry, but ultimately significantly contribute to the quality of life of humans and pokémon alike! I couldn't possibly abandon it!"

Jen wavered, but Stu raised a sceptical eyebrow. "We just want our pokémon."

The man deflated, then wrinkled his nose. "Fine. Unprocessed pokémon are held in the large storage at the end of the corridor in B1. Hand me the key card." When Jen looked at him in askance, he continued with: "Like I said, the key card isn't necessary on the upper floors. I need it more than you do."

"...Fine." She had barely brought the card forward when he snatched it. "You didn't tell us how to get out yet."

The man had already called the lift. "There are two exits: one at the centre, the other in the mansion. The mansion one is locked, but the centre one is always watched. In the end, it's your call."

"How are we gonna find either?" Stu asked.

"You should have thought of that before refusing to help me." The lift doors opened, and the man rushed inside. He mucked about with the control panel, then hesitated. "If you can't find your own way out, hide in the storage and I'll come fetch you. And if that—"

The rest of his sentence was cut off by the doors of the lift sliding shut.

Jen stared at the mute metal doors, then turned towards Stu. "What do you think?"

"Let's try the centre. If it's daytime, there's a good chance there will be trainers there to witness us if anyone tries to stop us."

Jen nodded, then experimentally pushed to lift button. As a small light lit up, a thought crossed her mind. "You think phones work here?"

Stu turned towards her sharply. "Why, got yours stowed away somewhere?"

She shook her head. "It was in my bag. I just mean that if we can find one..."

Stu pursed his lips. "It might. It depends on how much concrete and stuff there's between us and the nearest cell tower. I wouldn't count on it unless we can get above surface."

The lift doors opened, bathing them with yellow light. Jen helped Stu inside and smashed the button by B1. Looking at the mirror as the lift blared to life, she couldn't tell if it was the lighting or if she was truly as sallow as she looked. The haggardness and messy hair were indisputable, however, as was the sickly paleness of Stu's cheeks. They looked like they had been lost in a cave for a week.

The lift door opened into yet another dimly lit metal corridor, mercifully devoid of life. Jen took a breath of relief, then stepped outside.

Immediately, a deafening alarm rang through the air, so loud it rattled her bones even after she slammed her hands over her ears.

She stumbled back into the lift, trying to make herself small in hopes it would make the noise ignore her.

Stu mouthed something, his eyes wide with shock. Jen shook her head, about to tell him to wait though he obviously couldn't hear her either, when the barrage of sound vanished as abruptly as it had appeared. Jen moved her hands just in time to hear a robotic voice echoing through the speakers.

"Warning. Outbreak in sector A3. All personnel are to evacuate at once."

The warning repeated again, after which silence fell into the lift.

Stu shuddered. "Is that about us?"

"Us, or the scientist." In any case, her stomach lurched. "We shouldn't stay here."

She stepped back into the corridor, with Stu stumbling after her. A red alarm light had been lit, reflecting off the walls like fire. Nothing, not even the sound of footsteps. She made a guess as to which end of the corridor the man had meant and nudged her head in that direction. "Let's go."

They rushed onwards. Stu made a valiant effort to stay at her pace, but it wasn't long till Jen had to shore him up, all the while praying she had guessed correctly.

Heavy-looking double doors awaited them at the end of the corridor. She slammed against them and to her great relief found them opening before them.

She exhaled for what felt like the first time in minutes. They're were at the very least in _a_ storage. Better yet, the stark red lighting of the corridor didn't extend to it. Best of all, they seemed to be alone.

She left Stu against the wall to do as he saw fit and crept further inside. The hall was vast, with rows of large metal shelves on wheels stretching far into the distance. Everything looked like it had once been meticulously tidy and organised, but now resembled what Jen's room had been like after her mother's two-week training retreat. She stepped past empty pokéballs lying on the floor like discarded egg shells, a knot tightening in her gut.

"I'll search to the right." Stu hobbled over to the nearest shelves.

Jen left him to it and kept jogging through the storage, scanning through its contents as quickly as possible. Many shelves held cardboard boxes still taped shut, so presumably their stuff wouldn't be in them. She found more abandoned pokéballs, as well as a box that looked fresh from the factory, then finally stumbled across a series of trays much like the ones used at Pokémon Centers. She held out her hand to them, then desisted. Even if her pokémon were likely close to the front, there were still hundreds of them. She needed her trainer I.D. just to save time.

She kept on rummaging, and quickly hit the jackpot: next to the shelf were grey plastic moving boxes overflowing with sundry items. Recognising the corner of Stu's dodgy backpack, she dove in and found both her jacket and bag, fully intact.

"Found them!" she called out as she hauled Stu's bag on her other shoulder and picked up what she hoped were his shoes. Her voice echoed strangely in the vast hall. Was this what zubats felt like when they reached the end of a narrow tunnel and found their sonar no longer reaching the walls? She didn't wait for a response. Instead, she fished out her I.D. and tried not to think of the bags still left in the box as she began going through the pokéballs. Ultimately, there were only a dozen of them, but if each represented a missing trainer who had also found themselves in the underground lab…

A match.

Her heart skipped a beat. it wasn't much longer till she was clutching her entire team against her chest, vowing to never part from them again. She wanted to summon each of them at once to see they were okay with her own eyes, but it would have taken too much time. With a reluctant sigh, she clipped the pokéballs back to her belt and began looking for Stu's pokémon.

"Stu? How many pokémon did you have?"

Again, no response, unless she counted the distant sound of boxes being shuffled. In the end, she found three pokéballs matching Stu's I.D. She poured them into his bag, hoping it was all, then tied her jacket around her waist and hurried back to the entrance. "Stu!"

She found him half immersed in another box, from which he emerged with his hair mussed up and dusty. "Got them?" There was the tiniest hint of a smile in his eyes before he gave her a solemn nod. "Okay, let's bust this—"

The double doors opened.

Jen fell as silent as a sneaking rattata. They didn't stand in direct line of sight, but it was only a matter of a few sidesteps from the newcomer before they were caught. Their best bet would have been to hide, but so close to the door, there was no way to do so without causing a commotion.

While Stu's eyes remained wide and nailed the door, Jen unzipped her bag as quietly as she could and curled her fingers around the first pokéball she could find. Arnold, a trade she had received from the Hoenn region. If the newcomer carried a gun, they had already lost, but if not...

"Wait!"

It was Stu, addressing her. She looked up. The dread of what might have happened drifted away as she recognised the newcomer as the scientist. He was carrying a thick folder, and the pockets of his lab coat were bulging with were either pokéballs or more data.

He stared at Jen and Stu, then wiped sweat off his brow. "Do you have everything? We have to go, and now. Grendel is on the loose!"

"Grendel?" Jen asked.

"Not now! Come!" The scientist already hastened towards the door.

Left with few other options, Jen offered Stu her shoulder and followed after the scientist.

They hobbled across the corridor. Instead of returning to the lift, the scientist blazed past it, soon disappearing into the red light. Jen rushed after him, ignoring the annoyed grunt by Stu, and slipped through another door in his wake.

They entered a poky office. The red alarm lights cast it in a hellish hue, but Jen couldn't imagine it looking much better even if it had been full of potted plants and sunlight. The desk and the filing cabinet were of the same metal and barely both fit into the room. There was a paper tray on the desk, empty but for a single unused sheet. As soon as she and Stu made their way in, the scientist slammed the door shut behind them and began wrestling with the filing cabinet, trying to move it in front of the door with little avail.

Jen helped Stu into the chair. "Is this your office?"

"I worked on the lower floors." Even in the low light, the sweat on the scientist's face was both visible and distracting. "This one has been vacant for a month now. Not that anyone would try to get in here while Grendel—"

"Which is what, exactly?" Stu interrupted, having now caught his breath. He glared daggers at the man. "Don't pretend you don't have time to explain."

The scientist gave the filing cabinet a few more desperate shoves before looking down and seeing it was bolted to the floor. He leaned against the wall, wiping sweat off his forehead against his sleeve. For a moment, Jen could picture what he had looked like at her age: awkward, with slicked-back hair and bandaged knees, travelling the region with his pokémon just like everyone else.

"When I said this was a pharmaceutical venture, I wasn't lying," he said after a long pause. "At least, it was only that on the outset. Unfortunately, our results piqued the interest of the military, who then decided to fund further research, and..."

Jen shivered. "So you're actually making weapons here?"

"My research is strictly concerned with medicine," the scientist snapped. "Nor did I play any part in letting the military co-opt the laboratory." The second claim sounded far less convincing, but Jen couldn't actually tell whether he was lying or not. "But... yes. Some of the researchers here were pressured into the development of biological weapons in lieu of our initial goals."

"You've gotta be kidding me," Stu muttered, glaring hatred at the scientist.

Just as the scientist opened his mouth to respond, a tremendous crash like someone had just pushed a grand piano of the top floor of a skyscraper drowned out anything he might have said.

One look at the scientist's blanching face told Jen all she needed to know. "Is that—"

"Shh!" As soon as he was done shushing her, however, the scientist continue in a low, urgent voice. "A branch of the military research was focused on improving the offensive capabilities of pokémon, and for that purpose—"

The remainder of the explanation died in his throat as something that sounded like a tauros in a china shop began moving in the corridor, rapidly approaching the office.

Stu reached for Jen's hand. He squeezed it so tightly she half expected her bones to turn into powder.

The presence came to a sudden halt before their door. A deafening silence fell as all three of them tried very hard to pretend they didn't have to breathe. When the heavy presence didn't budge, Jen began to fear that when she finally could breathe again, she would no longer remember how.

Then, finally, the presence continued noisily onwards.

Even after that, it took several more moments, till the sounds of the presence were barely audible, that Stu broke the silence in the room. "What was_ that?_"

"Which matters more: finding that out, or getting out of here?" The scientist had inched towards the door, and now bit his lip with his hand poised on the handle.

"The lift will draw Grendel's attention. It has a sharp ears and a vicious mind. There is, however, an emergency staircase at the back of the the cultivation hall. You can come with me if you promise to stay entirely silent."

Jen helped Stu up, to no protest. They both agreed: the sooner they saw sunlight again, the better.

The scientist sucked in a deep breath, then turned the handle just as something heavy crashed against the ground somewhere in the distance. If Jen had to guess, one or several of the metal shelves in the storage had been toppled over.

"At least it's distracted, whatever it is," Stu murmured by Jen's ear.

The scientist pushed the door back shut. "Can't you kids keep quiet for five seconds?"

Jen was about to voice her indignation — she hadn't made a peep, after all — but Stu was quicker. "We aren't gonna waltz through the hallway singing at the top of our lungs, if that's what you fear."

The scientist rolled his eyes. "I wouldn't have put that past you."

"Start your comedy duo later," Jen snapped. "We need to go."

Neither of the sarcastic jerks had a response to that. They nodded and crept outside, closing the door behind them as silently as humanly possible.

Jen's heart pounded in her throat the entire time they crept through the corridor. The sound of distant thrashing reverberated from the storage and drowned out their footsteps even by the time they found the other end of the corridor. A single look at the smashed double doors told her there was no use trying to lock it behind them, but even getting behind them and into a new room made her feel a little better.

Then, she actually looked at the hall.

"This way," the scientist hissed as though their foe was ten rather than two hundred metres away.

Jen's feet followed on their own accord, too busy staring at their surroundings to do much more than drag her feet. After Stu stopped moving his feet entirely and stopped to gawk, she allowed herself to do the same.

She knew it wasn't the right word, but the best she could do was "glass tubes", so massive she couldn't even dream of getting her arms around one, affixed to the floor and ceiling alike in neat rows. A transparent, greenish liquid bubbled lazily within them, but that she barely noticed. Her eyes were nailed to the creature floating within the liquid of the nearest tube.

From a distance, it had looked like a common meowth, sleeping soundly, but a second look told her something was deeply wrong. Something grew from its back, something Jen thought she recognised as the wings of a beedrill, only much larger than those of any real beedrill and tucked close to the meowth's back. Worse, its front paws extended out into what looked like the blades of a scyther.

Looking around at the other dozen or so occupied tubes, she witnessed more similar oddities. A kangaskhan with the spikes of a nidoqueen, an arbok with the vicious horn of a rhyhorn, and one small entity so bizarre she couldn't tell what it had been, only that it now had long tentacle-like appendages and droopy antennae above its myriad of eyes.

"Are these... military tech?" Stu all but whispered the final words.

"I told you to keep quiet," the scientist said in the tone grown-ups always used when they wanted to avoid the question. "Come on."

Jen refused to budge. Pokémon were used in wars, of course, but to modify them in such a manner... worse, she couldn't even see a practical purpose to most of the monstrosities around her.

"How could you?" Her voice quivered, but she didn't care.

"I already told you I didn't work on this floor." There was a shadow of guilt to the scientist's voice.

"But you knew what was going on!" Stu yelled, too loud and two close. "How could you let them do this?!"

"I couldn't stop them!" By then, the guilt had overwhelmed even the scientist's previous urgency. He whirled towards Jen and Stu. The liquid by his side threw an eerie green shadow over him. "I'm just one man! Besides..." He hesitated, glancing at the curled-up Pokémon in the tube before jerking his head firmly away. "As ugly as is it... sometimes, so that science may advance, there must be certain... sacrifices."

Jen's vision blurred. She careened to the right till she found a handhold and steadied herself, battling against the overwhelming nausea that threatened to expel what little was left in her stomach. After she stopped heaving, her eyes focused on the floor before her. A pool of viscous liquid ended just short of the tip of her toes. Raising her gaze, she saw a glass tube more massive than even the largest of the others, reduced to a mess of jagged splinters. It didn't do much to help her nausea.

"Jen?" Stu's voice was wan and weak as he nudged her side.

Jen averted her eyes away both from him and the scientist, and came face to face with yet another trapped pokémon. It was curled up around itself, and the metal plating covering its limbs gleamed in lamplight. It had started its life as a sandshrew, and presumably an aron. Even knowing her own lairon was tucked safely in her bag, Jen couldn't help the tears welling in her eyes. She pressed her forehead against the glass in a gesture of sympathy

The creature suddenly unfurled itself. For a moment, it continued to hang suspended in the liquid, floating as though in a dream. Then, it opened its eyelids. Jen found herself staring directly at a pair of brown-irised, black-pupilled, starkly human eyes.

She jolted away from the tube, unable to tear her gaze away. No matter how she tried to convince herself otherwise, each moment only made her more certain she had been right the first time. Human eyes. Human eyes which looked back at her with... curiosity, or even sympathy.

She spoke up before she even understood what she was saying. "What happened to the other trainers whose bags were in the storage?"

The scientist made no answer.

Stu swivelled sharply towards him, as rigid as a lamppost. Jen didn't bother. She already knew the answer, and though she wished to hear the scientist confess it, it would make what was already a nightmare into undeniable reality.

"There were others? So..." Stu turned back towards Jen, then spotted the aronshrew in its tube, tilting its head as though to better see what was going on in the lab. He went deadly still.

When he finally spoke again, his voice was thick as slurry. "Would that have been... us?"

"It could still be if we don't leave at once." The scientist sounded resigned. He must have known he would have to pay his dues, one way or another. "Now be silent while I open this—"

Wedging the files under his armpit, he swiped the key card and padded in the code. A small red light appeared on the pad, accompanied by a reproving beep.

"What..." The scientist hesitated, retracing the path of his index finger before falling entirely silent. "Did either of you see if I keyed in a mistake?"

Jen and Stu shook their heads nearly in unison. They were too far to have seen the exact numbers.

The scientist muttered something rude-sounding under his breath. His finger hovered over the keys for a long time before he finally re-swiped the card.

A fresh, piercing alarm, like the roar of a small but vicious pokémon, filled the room.

By the time Jen removed her hands from her eyes, the scientist had buried his face in his hands. "She must have changed the code! Why now of all times?!"

But he didn't have time to tear his hair out. Based on the sudden stillness in the air behind them, the new alarm had attracted some attention.

Time stopped. Then, inexorably, the earlier galumphing grew louder once more, approaching at an alarming speed.

"Oh sh-" The scientist turned the colour of sour milk. He put the files on the floor and began pounding on the door, to no avail. After bruising his knuckles, he abandoned the door and rushed instead to the nearest tube, smashing his fist against the control panel mounted on a nearby pedestal. Again, the alarm beeped reproachfully.

"Jen!" Stu was tugging at her sleeve once more. "We should—"

Jen was already moving. There was no escape route, and so she dragged Stu with her behind a nearby desk. Once there, she dropped down to her knees and peered carefully towards the doors.

All the hairs on her body rose at once as she saw what filled the doorway.

The creature had been a mamoswine, once. At least, most of it had been. Much like the chimera Jen had locked eyes with before, this one too had the plating of an aron grafted onto it, mixed together with orange plates she guessed came from a rhyperior. It took her a while to recognise the source of the blades jutting out of its sides; once she did, she began to tremble with the thought of how many sevipers had died to supply them all. The horn was probably also rhyperior's. Overall, the chimera looked like something that needed only to breathe on you to annihilate you.

It lumbered into the hall.

She held her breath, wishing she could have looked away. She didn't bother to figure out where the additional scythes and sensors came from, because at that point Grendel — because what else could it be? — turned towards the scientist.

The scientist stood frozen in the middle of an aisle, hypnotised like doomed prey.

Grendel's already tiny eyes narrowed on him. Then, it lowered its weight closer to the floor. Its massive tusks gleamed in the crimson light.

"P-please..." The scientist took an awkward, puppet-like gait backwards. "I wasn't one of them. I didn't..."

Without warning, Grendel careened ahead at an impossible speed, striking the scientist head-on. Tusk tore into flesh with a sickening squelch, followed by a truncated scream as the scientist was propelled backwards and crashed into one of the tubes. He slipped slowly down to the floor, feebly clutching his maimed side. After that, he did not move.

Grendel, its tusk stained with what Jen told herself was blood, only blood, stared at him for a moment longer. It slowly backed away, then brought its head down again, aiming downwards.

Jen leapt to her feet.

"Jen!" Stu's futile attempt to grab her couldn't even slow her down. Within moments, she was around their hiding spot and rushing to stand between Grendel and the scientist.

She dove onto the aisle and stuttered to a halt. The scientist didn't react to her appearance with even a blink. Grendel, meanwhile...

Already before she turned to face it, she felt a piercing gaze burn holes into her skull. Even then, she wasn't prepared for how much fury could fit into such small eyes.

Swallowing the fear that threatened to turn her limbs into water, she held that gaze.

"Are you Grendel?"

Her voice had quavered, so much so she so much so she feared the chimera hadn't understood her, even if it knew human tongues. At the very least, the creature ceased kicking the ground and waited.

Of course, it might have simply been sizing up its new target. Still, Jen managed a tremulous smile. "Hi, Grendel. I'm Jen."

Still, no movement. One of Grendel's thinner tentacles uncoiled from underneath its plating and hovered in the air, tentative, almost uncertain.

Jen swallowed. "I don't know if can help you. But if I can, I want to."

Grendel blinked, slowly. When it reopened its eyes, it lowered its head back down, its tusks trailing the floor.

Jen raised her hands into the air, desperately trying to regain eye contact. She couldn't for the life of her remember if mamoswines found such gestures soothing. Was there even enough mamoswine left in Grendel to care about it one way or another? "I know you must be angr-"

The rest of her plea died in her throat. One moment, Grendel had been on the other side of the room. The next, all there was in the world was a sharp, puncturing pain when something that felt like a giant's sword sliced at her arm.

She knew it would only make things worse, but with the details around her drowning in crimson, she couldn't help it. She screamed.

"Jen!" There was a crash as Stu, while trying to rush to her rescue, placed too much weight on his damaged leg and plummeted to the floor. In a way, it worked: the sound drew Jen's attention from the wound long enough for her to regain mastery over herself fall silent. Grendel's furious breathing came from so close by it was a miracle she heard anything else.

Her gaze hazy with tears of pain, she focused. Grendel had turned towards where Stu's prone arms were visible behind a control panel, but now returned its attention to Jen. Its breathing grew louder still till it reverberated through her entire body. Distantly, she realised she was standing between its tusks, so close she needed only to reach out to touch its snout.

Ignoring her maimed arm as best she could, she brought the good one back up.

"Jen!" Stu had managed to stand back up, leaning desperately against the desk.

"It's okay, Stu." To her surprise, her voice barely shook. Right there, with the chimera's fur a hair's breath away from her hand, and her own life roughly as close to ending, she finally felt like she was back in her element. This too was a pokémon, if not like any she had befriended before. How different was this from the time she had attempted to calm down a gyarados through her voice and eyes alone? In a way, this felt like an opportunity to make up for her failure then.

A opportunity that would cost her her life if she made a mistake. But then, what choice did she have?

She took a deep breath. She blinked rapidly, trying to moisturise her eyeballs as thoroughly as possible. She raised her gaze to meet Grendel's.

Grendel met it with a surprised blink. For all its rampaging, a single look from close up told Jen it was no brute set on causing purposeless mayhem. It was rather a deeply damaged creature, in great pain, trying to exact revenge the best way it knew how. The reflection of the pain and indignity it had been through brought tears back to her eyes, the stinging pain bursting in her arm almost forgotten.

"I'm so sorry," she said.

Grendel's eyes narrowed. Its wrath remained palpable, but it was listening.

"I can't know how you really feel, but..." Tears were now rolling down her cheeks in earnest. Normally, she hated crying in front of other people, but in the moment, both Stu and the scientist faded into the background like they were furniture. Finally, she shook her head. "Well, since I don't know, I won't say you're wrong to want revenge. But my friend has done nothing wrong. He would never even raise his voice when talking to a pokémon. Can you let him go, at least?"

Jen's eyeballs were throbbing, and she was forced to blink. Was it just her, or had the fathomless wrath in Grendel's eyes grown a little less black? "And I understand why you might not want to, but..." She tried to smile harder than she ever had in her life. "I would like to be your friend."

The following few seconds felt like they lasted an entire year. Grendel's stare remained intense and as cold as midwinter as it scrutinised Jen, which in turn took long enough to wither almost any hope. Jen held her ground. She was unclear if she could move even if she wanted to: she felt like someone had mounted her feet onto the floor like the filing cabinet in the office. In any case, she stayed.

Finally, like a mountain suddenly stirring, Grendel turned its head sharply upwards.

For a moment, Jen wondered what death would feel like.

Then, with great deliberation, Grendel fixed its stare back on Jen. It closed its eyes. Bending its knees, it slowly lowered itself onto the floor till it lay still. One eye remained shut, while the other turned towards Jen in half caution, half curiosity. The spirit of immense wrath which had clung to every visible bit of its fur retreated back inside it, not gone, but at least, for now, no longer ruling the chimera.

Jen's knees gave in, relief slackening all her muscles. The sudden movement didn't alarm the great beast: in fact, it turned its head so that one of its tusks touched her damaged arm, as though in penance.

Her arms trembled as she did so, but Jen crawled forward and placed a hand on Grendel's enormous face, careful to steer clear of the horn. The pokémon leaned into her touch, and her palm swiftly sank into its thick fur. A moment later, Jen allowed the contact to morph essentially a hug, leaning into Grendel in turn and burying her face in its comfortingly warm mane.

She could have stayed like that forever, happily drifting into slumber, if not for Stu calling out for her. "Jen!"

Reluctantly, she pulled back, meeting once again Grendel's hard but no longer hostile eyes. "What is it?"

"We still need to get out of here." He sounded oddly hoarse.

Jen nodded but made no effort to move. She wasn't entirely sure she could up without Grendel's support.

"Not for nothing..." Stu cleared his throat. When he continued, he sounded a little more like his usual sarcastic. "But Mr. Harvester over here is still bleeding to death."

Wondering when and how Stu had discovered the scientist's name, Jen gave Grendel one final squeeze, hoping it would convey she wasn't just a fair-weather friend. She stood up, glad to find her knees no longer buckling, and walked over to the dying man. Grendel followed her.

The scientist's eyes widened when they approached, but he didn't make even the feeblest effort to flee. There was a gaping wound near his hip with something dark red poking out of it. Jen tried not to look at it. "Mr. Harvester? "Is there any other passcode that might work on the door?"

The scientist frowned at the name, then groaned. The lack of words made Jen shiver anew, but she decided that for as long as he lived, there was still a chance.

Without paying further attention to the wound — all she had in her backpack were plasters for minor cuts — she crouched down and looked into his eyes. "Mr. Harvester." She managed to keep her voice level, but it came at the cost of great fatigue: what wouldn't she have given to be transported somewhere far away and curl up beneath some blankets with a cup of hot chocolate and Cleyra dozing off next to her? "You need help from someone who knows what they're doing, and we can only get that by getting out of here."

A cough, so violent that Stu, who had been observing the proceedings from some distance with the solemnity of a mourner, jumped in surprise. Jen waited patiently.

When the man spoke, his voice was wheezy and as thin as a milotic's scale. "There is... an override code..." He coughed again, with less energy. "But it won't work once the alarm has already triggered. You best bet is... to get...that..." For some foolish reason, he wasted some of his little remaining strength to raise the arm on his unmangled side and pointed at Grendel.

Grendel rumbled with disapproval. The scientist quickly dropped his hand, then turned his gaze back to Jen. "Get it to... break the doors." He closed his eyes, and for a long, horrible moment Jen was certain he would never open them again. "It shouldn't be able to, but it shouldn't..." He paused and groaned, blinking, "have been able to break the cultivation tank, either."

Jen nodded and stood up. She untied her jacket from around her hips and draped it across the man to keep him warm. It barely even covered the wound. That done, she focused her attention on Grendel.

Grendel watched her carefully, as though waiting for her to speak. Certainly, it could still go into a berserk rage and maul or stampede her with little more than a thought, but for all its immense strength, what really struck Jen now that it was calm was its obvious intelligence, as well as its sorrow. It leaned towards her touch so that her hand brushed against its plated flanking. Stroking it gently, she discovered deep cuts in the unarmoured parts of its flanks, some with shards of thick cuts still poking out of them.

"Did you get these when you broke out?" She had already reached for the nastiest-looking shard before she had time to think about it.

Grendel responded with a low rumble which she supposed meant agreement, then shuddered as she pulled the glass out. She tossed it quickly aside as the edge cut into her fingers. Was it just her, or did Grendel sound like a donphan?

"Jen..." Stu had managed to get up on both his feet and had hobbled over. He still kept a safe distance from Grendel, one arm held over his torso. "The shards are keeping the blood in. You need someone who knows what they're doing to help it."

"Oh." She turned towards Grendel. "I'm sorry. Will you be okay for now?"

Grendel, who so far has all but dismissed Stu, now turned to look at him. Stu gulped, blinking rapidly, however. Jen would have liked to tell him a steady gaze was an important part in gaining a pokémon's trust, but by then Grendel had already moved back to ignoring him. It then nodded. Even such a small gesture became an earthquake when performed by a creature of its size.

Jen nodded back, then hesitated. "Before that, I have a favour to ask. Can you—"

Grendel interrupted her by turning its head away while simultaneously uncoiling two of its tentacles. It raised them up in an obvious silencing gesture.

Jen frowned and tried again. "I understand if you don't want to help anyone who is here, b—"

This time, Grendel shook its head, so wildly Jen was nearly tossed backwards by the force of the gesture. It glanced at her once, as if to reassure her, then walked forward. It marched right past the scientist and the tubes — cultivation tanks? — accelerating till there was no way it could stop before crashing against the emergency exit.

The ear-splitting sound of bending metal reverberated through the hall.

When Jen dared to look, what had been a sturdy wall had been reduced to a heap of scrap. Grendel moved aside, unharmed and obviously immensely satisfied with itself, its tentacles standing in proud attention.

Pausing only to pick Stu up to go with her, Jen rushed over to Grendel. "Thank you so much!" She offered the chimera a clumsy half hug, ignoring the way Stu stiffened against her other shoulder, happy to receive in response a rumble which almost sounded like a purr. "We'll be back with help for you, okay? I promise we'll see it's other again."

Grendel's eyes followed them to the staircase. After helping Stu against the rail and seeing that he could climb up by himself without her assistance, she waved back at it, fervently hoping she could actually keep her word.

The staircase was spiral and made out of aluminium. The alarm lights were dimmer there, barely enough to elevate the level of light above pitch black. On other days, it would have made Jen struggle against her fear of heights, but for once she found it easy to nail her eyes on Stu's back, gritting her teeth at his glacial pace. Should she just step past him and rush upwards? But then, what if he faltered and fell backwards with no-one to catch him? She stayed where she was, practically squirming by the time she saw the landing above.

There wasn't much to the landing, apart from another dilemma: another heavy door stood between them and whatever lay beyond it. Jen glared at the keypad, the numbers just barely decipherable in the dark.

"Wanna try your luck?" Stu sounded perkier than he had since they had first left their cells as he waved the key card in the air. When had he snatched that?

"Sure." She watched him use the card, then hesitated over the numbers. What had the initial code been, again? It was better than taking a shot in the dark.

"One seven three?"

"That's what I thought." Still, Stu gulped audibly as she hit enter.

The small green led lighting up might as well have been the halo of a heavenly choir.

The door itself resembled those of bomb shelters. Jen braced herself against it, but she halted before actually applying any pressure. "Should we summon our pokémon? We have no idea what were walking into."

Stu chewed his lip. "Yeah." Perhaps like Jen, he only now recalled what the scientist had said about armed security patrols.

After some consideration, Jen decided to give Aaron a shot. Surely a lairon's metal plating would keep bullets from harming him? Stu, meanwhile, called on a growlithe which immediate gave out a sharp bark before moving to lick Stu's swollen foot.

"I said it's fine, Surt." Stu's voice was impatient, but he couldn't quite mask his affection for what Jen guessed was his starter. "It's been too long for that to help, anyway."

Surt whined, but he sat down next to Stu instead, casting curious glances at Aaron, who in his usual style had barely glanced at Jen before assuming her side, eyes darting around looking for potential threats.

Nodding at Stu, Jen pushed the door open.

They were alone in the new room. A good start. There were no windows to verify if they had actually made it back above ground, but the change in furnishing still made Jen's heart sing.

She crept ahead, letting Aaron take the lead after he pushed ahead of her, trying all the while to discern where they were. By the look of things, they were in another storage, full of boxes as well as all sorts of machinery and equipment languishing unused and unplugged. The mansion wasn't entirely out of the question, not if there really had been a lab there as the scientist had claimed, but she would have put all her money on them being back at the Pokémon Center, a suspicion which only grew as she saw an old healing machine in one corner, with a layer of dust coating its bulky frame.

"Door's there," Stu commented, and a quick look around confirmed it was the only other door in the room. Furthermore, it was plain old indoors door, with a regular handle and everything. Finally, they had caught a break.

"Yes, the door's here."

The new voice was warm and almost sing-song, but it made Jen's blood curdle in her veins. It took genuine effort to move her head to see the person who stepped out of the shadows.

The nurse smiled, but it wasn't the polite bland smile you always got when you visited the centre, or even the more genuine-seeming caring one she had bestowed upon Jen when she had first entered the building. It was cold, almost regretful, but from her smooth brow and set jaw, it was also determined. The muzzle of her gun gleamed in the scant light as she trained it on Jen.

A nervous blissey stepped into view in the nurse's wake, holding her small paws before her in a gesture which resembled hand-wringing. The nurse didn't even glance at her.

"Dismiss your pokémon." The command rang clear, with no apparent emotion. When Jen didn't move to dismiss Aaron at once, the nurse trained the gun on Stu, instead. "Now."

Swallowing the bile that had gathered at the back of her mouth, Jen did as she was told. From the tell-tale sound of a pokéball being activated behind her, Stu had done the same.

The nurse kept the gun steady, like someone well-trained in handling firearms. "Good. Now, get your backs to the wall."

Trying not to grimace, Jen walked backwards till her back met with something. From the corner of her eye, she could see Stu was trying to attract her attention, but couldn't risk turning towards him.

The nurse sighed. A brief, soft sound. "I'm not happy to do this."

"You don't have to." To her great surprise, Jen didn't think she sounded scared. It was like befriending Grendel had taken the worst of her terror away for good. Or perhaps she was just too exhausted to really see the danger they were in.

"I'm afraid I rather do. The work we do here is precious beyond your wildest dreams. It's worth more than any of our individual lives."

At these words, the blissey hid her eyes behind her hands.

"That doesn't sound like something a health care professional would say." Stu sounded as calm as could be reasonably expected. Only belatedly did Jen remember that his mother had been a nurse.

"It's a matter of prioritisation. Though the bulk of our research has strayed from the intended path, we are still developing medicine which could save countless lives. I cannot have anything jeopardise that. So, you have two options. You can either stand back and agree to return downstairs, or else..."

Jen's mind whirred as she tried to come up with a way out.

"There's a man," she finally exclaimed. "The one who was locked in the room with us. He's just downstairs, and he's badly hurt. He... he's probably going to die."

The nurse blinked. "Somerset?" Her expression hardened. "That is unfortunate, but it can't be helped. Not till the two of you have decided what you're going to do."

Jen's shuddered. "There's more. One of the pokémon in the tubes—"

"I know."

"It's the big one."

The nurse removed one hand from the gun and used it to pinch the bridge of her nose. "I _know. _I assume it has managed to trap itself in one of the storages."

Jen shrugged before remembering she wasn't supposed to move. Fortunately, the nurse didn't seem to care. "It was in the lab when we last saw it."

This, finally, made the nurse falter for a moment. "It's... still in the lab? Then how did you two—"

"We ran past it."

Jen could tell the words had been a mistake from the way the nurse's eyes narrowed. Even so, though she brought her other hand back to the pistol, her hold of it was slacker than before. "I'm afraid your friend's limp makes me doubt that."

"He hurt his foot only after we got away," slipped from Jen's mouth before she remembered what Stu had told her about the injury.

"I'm afraid he told me exactly how he received that wound."

Jen shrugged, trying to think of something else to say. If she couldn't keep their nemesis talking, she would once again focus on herding them back downstairs, or worse yet, taking aim. "A wound which you didn't treat."

The accusation seemed to do the trick: again, the nurse hesitated. "I did check on it and make sure it wasn't infected. It's not like I—"

The rest, Jen didn't hear. She saw what was almost certainly the last opportunity she was going to get. She took it.

The instant she began to move, her mothers warnings chimed in her ears, as loud as though she was standing right next to her.

_Never try to be a hero unless you have no other choice._

Well, she had no other choice now.

Her foot hit the floor. The nurse jerked her head back towards her.

Another jump. Everything felt so slow, even the heavy thumping of her heart. The nurse moved her hand to the side, but hadn't actually aimed at her yet. Jen could only pray that while the nurse would undoubtedly shoot her and Stu if they got in her way, she didn't particularly wish to do it.

Her sneaker hit a slick part of the floor, and for a few horrible heartbeats, she thought she would trip and doom the entire endeavour. Somehow, she managed to regain her momentum and kept moving.

The next second, she crashed against the nurse with the entire weight of her body.

The nurse didn't fall, but she did stagger. Seizing her chance, Jen groped for the gun, her hand slipping on the smooth metal and scratching at the nurse's fingers, their grip so tight around the weapon they might as well have been made out of metal as well. Distantly, she heard the blissey squeal and separate herself from the combat, and while she would have hated to see one of pokémon act in the same manner she was grateful to the nurse pokémon: clearly it didn't agree with its master's plans.

"Let go!" The nurse backhanded her sharply, sending her careening to the side. Still dizzy, she leapt back into the fray, painfully conscious that if she dallied at all the nurse would simply shoot her.

As soon as she clutched the nurse gun-wielding arm, clinging to it like a bewildered mankey, all she could think was how she had to hold on no matter what. No matter how hard the nurse tried to shake her off or pry her fingers away, no matter how she cursed, she had to hold on.

As she couldn't shift her otherwise, the nurse resorted to striking and scratching her. Jen squeezed her eyes shut and clung on more tightly. She had to hold on. She had to.

"Surt!"

An eager bark, and Jen's world tilted as she crashed against the floor. A moment of confusion and blinking stars out of her eyes later, she discovered Surt had leapt against the nurse's chest and toppled her over where Jen had failed to do so, growling menacingly at the startled woman.

Her grip on the gun was a little loose. Without thinking, Jen grabbed at it once more and this time managed to wrest control of it.

"Stu!" She tried to stand up, stumbled, and then managed it on her second attempt, her ankle just barely slipping away from the nurse's blind grasp. "Let's go!"

Stu shook his head. "No time! Take the gun and go find help!"

Quickly looking to see Surt still wrestling with the nurse, barking madly, Jen dashed past both them and the trembling blissey and towards the door. She crashed against it, only then remembering to use the handle.

She burst into an empty corridor, running around like a headless pidgey till finally seeing bright lights ahead. She rushed towards them.

It was with a jolt of shock that she recognised the reception area of the Pokémon Center, so normal and peaceful. Still, she wasted little time before moving ahead, dashing through the double doors and into the warm dusk outside.

She felt eyes turning towards her as she ran on, certain her bones would turn to jelly the moment she paused to take a deep breath. She was just about to decide who to approach when she was blinded by a bright light. She slowed down without meaning to, raising her hand to shield her eyes.

The light changed its trajectory. "Jen?"

Still blinded, Jen could only blink, but there was no mistaking the voice. In fact, though her eyes burned, she welcomed the sense of déjà vu. "Auntie!"

She ran into her aunt's arms, and after a moment of confusion felt arms wrap around her. For the first time since she had woken up, she was perfectly safe.

"What's wrong, Jen?" Her aunt's voice was gruff, but never unfriendly, not even when a further note of alarm crept into it as she continued: "What happened to your arm?"

In all the tumult, Jen had completely forgotten about the wound. Now, however, it began to sting anew, as though the words had awakened it.

She shook her head. For all she knew, Stu was still in deadly danger. "You have to come with me!"

She had already struggled free and heading back towards the centre when her aunt stopped her. "Jen, you need to calm down. What has happened?"

Was there anything she could say that would make her aunt follow her without too many questions? "I found the missing kid, and the culprit's still there with him!"

That did the trick. Jen thanked all the gods that her aunt took her by her word and nodded at her frowning partner without any further questions. "You stay here and head directly to the station. We'll get someone to look at that cut as soon as possible."

"No." What if her aunt and the other policewoman found the passage to the lab and did something stupid? They might well hurt Grendel, or get hurt themselves. "I need to come with you. There's something very important I need to show you."

Her aunt hesitated only for a moment. "Fine. But only if you stay behind." She didn't smile when Jen nodded, only looked grimly in the direction of the centre. "Let's go."

* * *

The manager of the reservation was about the same age as of Jen's oldest cousin, if completely different in style: his dark hair was slicked back, and his fingernails were so meticulously manicured that even Jen, who didn't usually pay any more attention to her nails than checking that they still existed, wished she had spent a little more time scrubbing the dirt underneath them that morning.

The man didn't seem to notice. He gave both her and Stu a robust handshake, introducing himself as Clarence with a dazzling smile, then led them through the building happily chattering all the while.

Though it was a warm day for autumn and Jen was wearing a brand new hoodie with heavy lining, she shuddered as they reached the vista and got their first proper view of the reservation beyond.

Stu balked, nearly pressing his nose against the glass. Jen couldn't blame him: the area was breathtaking, and seemed to stretch far beyond the horizon. It was like the Safari Zone, only one no trainers were ever allowed in and the vegetation was allowed to grow twice as thick. She imagined what it would feel like to be a pokémon in this reservation: to be a mankey swinging from tree to tree, a pikachu scurrying in the undergrowth, or a seel sunbathing on the flat rocks by the lake to the north.

"We don't usually allow anyone but researchers in, of course," Clarence continued his chatter, apparently perfectly content to keep talking whether others where actively listening to him or not. "But obviously, we don't mind making an exception under these circumstances."

Jen nodded without thinking, then realised the manager hadn't seen the gesture. "I'd really like that."

Clarence turned his attention towards Stu, who shrugged, suddenly nervous. His feet dragged as Clarence took them down a different flight of stairs to a small glass door all but invisible to the casual observer.

He halted with the key already in the lock. "I assume you carry your pokémon with you?"

Jen nodded. She hadn't entered a single battle since leaving Cinnabar, spending most of the month at home recovering her arm and trying to comprehend all that she had seen. This was likewise the first time she had seen Stu after they had left the police station. They had only nodded in acknowledgement upon meeting her. Words were too brittle for the time being.

"Just an additional precaution, naturally. If you have any misgivings about the situation, please do not approach the pokémon and return back in-doors at once." Clarence hesitated, then lowered his voice. "If I am perfectly honest, I would be much happier if you remained by the door and only observed it from afar. But again, special circumstances and all that."

Jen nodded and tried to look as happy and confident as possible. She was beginning to see just how many strings her aunt and mother had pulled to make this visit possible in the first place.

The lock chimed. The door itself slid open smoothly without a single sound.

"I should accompany you." There was a blatant trill of nervousness in Clarence's voice.

"It's fine." To Jen's surprise, she discovered she meant what she said. "It's probably better if I go alone."

Clarence shoulders sagged in relief before he remembered himself. "I will wait for you here, then. Come back if anything at all seems strange."

With that, he walked over to a nearby padded bench and flipped open his phone. The tell-tale bleeps and bloops of Ekans II soon followed.

Jen stepped onto the grass. Stu followed, at least for the first two steps: he hovered near the door, casting paranoid glances all around them.

Finally, he halted completely. "How about I stay here and keep watch? Don't want to ruin the guy's high score attempt."

"Fine." It was strange, but she didn't find herself the least bit annoyed with Stu. Above all, she was relieved to see he was much as he had always been.

She walked ahead to the first of the trees before pausing, the long blades of grass tickling her shins through her canvas trousers. Of course, there was no telling if any pokémon would even show up, and she didn't know how long she'd be willing to wait there standing for one. Why hadn't she taken that extra jacket Mom had insisted on? Before she began to shiver, however, the wind eased up. She tried to take things as they come, but it was difficult to be patient sometimes.

She awoke from her musings to a familiar rumble.

She stifled a gulp as Grendel lumbered towards her. She had forgotten just how big it was. The fact it wasn't rushing like she knew it could was probably a good sign, but it didn't look exactly happy, either.

It halted some steps away from her, the long tusk that had only a month ago cut into her arm hovering mere inches from her.

For a moment, they simply stared at one another. It was as if they were back in that grotty lab, illuminated only by the cultivation tanks and the emergency lights, with her one inch from being gored to death.

They both stepped forward at the same time, then halted, equally awkwardly. Jen let out a nervous giggle.

The broke the glass-like tension. Grendel closed its eyes, took a step forward, then lay down over its front legs, allowing Jen to come over and stroke its head.

Jen hugged it for a long time, the creature's deep rumbling breath moving her every time it inhaled and exhaled.

"It's good to see you again."

* * *

The reservation's cafeteria was a plain affair, with nothing to look at but a couple of posters about pokémon preservation with printing dates from before Jen's birth. Maybe it was more cheerful when the rangers and scientists were actually there, but with Jen and Stu alone, it felt like a ghost house.

"It looked happy, I think." Stu punctuated the comment with a sip from a carton of berry juice.

Jen nodded, staring ahead. She ought to have been grateful Grendel had found itself such a lovely home. Even knowing her aunt wasn't one to use excess force, she had feared what would happen when the police raided the lab.

Her aunt had been reluctant to tell her the full extent of the events and had only caved after Jen had insisted a hundred times over. Curiously, Grendel hadn't attacked anyone on the team. It had waited patiently by the staircase, and when the police emerged, Jen's aunt in the forefront, it had grunted in acknowledgement and waited. Jen had no doubt it could and would have killed them all if it had come to that, but thankfully no-one on the force had panicked.

Most of the strange creatures Jen had seen in the lab hadn't been able to survive outside their cultivation tanks. Those which had now lived here with Grendel. The unharmed pokémon which had been stolen had mostly found their owners, as had what remained of the previously kidnapped trainers. She tried not to think about it too much. As for the scientists and the security team who had worked in the lab, most of them had evaded the police so far. Mr. Somerset still in the hospital, awaiting better health to face the prosecution. Jen had yet to go see him. She wasn't sure she would.

And the nurse, who it turned out was rather a doctor masquerading in a less-qualified position... she was in detention, awaiting a trial. Jen's aunt had said there was likely enough evidence against her already, but that she and Stu might have to testify, all the same.

"What are you doing?"

Jen awoke from her musings to see Stu staring at her. Only then did she realise she was toying with her pokéballs.

She separated one from the rest: Cleyra's. She showed it to Stu. "Before she kidnapped me, the nurse said she was going to try out a rejuvenation treatment on Cleyra."

"Yeah?" Everything about Stu's tone suggested great suspicion.

"Thing is..." She summoned Cleyra. The marowak appeared on the linoleum floor, and looked around before sitting down by Jen's feet, its skull gleaming in the dim light shining through the cafeteria's dirty windows. "She actually did it. I had a check-up done on Cleyra, and she's doing much better for a pokémon her age than she was before."

When Stu spoke, he sounded very tired. "She probably did it just so that she'd make better body parts when she cut her up. You saw what they did to them there."

"I know." She knew him to be right, but even so she couldn't stop thinking about it. She petted Cleyra, then stood up and tossed her empty juice carton in the trash.

"You know," she said after a moment. "I'm gonna continue my journey."

Stu raised an eyebrow. "Right now?"

"Soon."

"Are you sure?" Here, a note of friendly concern.

"I don't wanna quit after getting so far. Besides, it's what I've always wanted to do." She gestured at Cleyra to join her by her side, and she waddled over. "I can't let this beat me."

"Yeah." Stu was still listless, but there was only so much Jen could do for him.

"But after that, I'm gonna go to school. And I'll study to be a policewoman so I can help make sure nothing like this happens ever again."

"Gonna follow the family creed after all those years saying you wanted to be a gym leader instead?" Stu's smile was lopsided, but it was, at the very least, a genuine smile. "Well, if you're gonna do that, I'm going to become a scientist, instead. There won't be putting together what's already been broken, but..." He shrugged. "I feel like there's a lot of good that can be done with it, too."

Their eyes met. When Stu got up, Jen held out her hand.

When they shook their hands, forming a secret, unspoken pact, Jen discovered she he could truly smile again.


End file.
